cengage

Could achievement badges be the motivation your students need?
One of the common causes of learners’ lack of motivation and failure to complete is a failure to understand why the learning activities are valuable. Are learners in your courses asking themselves:

Why am I doing this?
When will I be done?
Why does this matter?

If they are, they might also be coming to conclusions like:

I’d rather spend my time on something else.
I’m not going to make it to the end—I can’t even see where the end is.
This doesn’t matter to me.

Students at Arizona State University needed a personalized online solution to support the flipped classroom model—Learning Objects to the rescue!
Using excellent instructional design and technology demonstrably helps students, faculty and institutions. This case study describes our work with Arizona State University’s Psychology department where we developed personalized tools—using our Learning Objects platform—to heighten retention and persistence in students using LO.
Here’s what we found:

Targeted feedback for incorrect answers motivated students to persist until they got it right
Engagement increased as students used easy-to-follow videos and interactive tools within LO, along with their psych book
And, most importantly, students who used the

Last week, the city’s top talent joined Cengage employees and members of the leadership team for “Cengaged,” the first in a series of Cengage events designed to engage the area’s brightest minds in education, technology and innovation.
The theme of the event was “Our Transformative Journey” and included opening remarks from CEO Michael Hansen, who reflected on his personal Cengage journey. From leading the company through bankruptcy to overseeing the Cengage transition from a print publisher to an education and technology company, Michael demonstrated that change is only hard if you don’t understand the drivers behind it.

The Beginning
I have been in education for 11 years—a third of my life. I have been into technology for even longer. When it comes to technology, I’m self-taught and persistent. I work until I understand and am comfortable enough to help others. I think that’s how I fell in love with teaching.
I started at Rowan-Cabarrus Community College in 2011 as an adjunct teaching ENG-114, Professional Research and Reporting. At that point, I had only taught 9th grade at a local high school and didn’t have community college experience. Having attended a private institution for my undergrad, I wasn’t
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Q&A with Ken Carson, Chief People Officer at Cengage, on our new parental leave policy.Q: Cengage recently announced an update to its parental leave policy. Can you give a high level overview?A: The arrival of a child–whether by birth, adoption or surrogacy–represents the start of a huge undertaking for parents. Our parental leave policy will now provide 12 weeks of fully-paid leave for all parents–women and men–provided they are full time employees with at least 1 year of service with us.
This is a meaningful increase from the prior policy of 8 weeks of paid leave for the primary
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There is far too much at stake for institutions not to prioritize retention—especially in today’s educational climate.

Invest in Retention

Hear why Phillip Long, Chief Innovation Officer at the University of Texas at Austin, and MJ Bishop, Director of the Kirwan Center for Academic Innovation at University System of Maryland, believe retention is a mission-critical investment.

Stay tuned for more videos around relevant topics like employability, affordability and readiness.

Digital Learning, Done Better

Social Psychology Professor Carmon Hicks makes student interaction the focus of class time at Indiana’s Ivy Tech Community College, so it’s logical that she’d want to promote interactivity outside of class, too. Hicks’ experience with another company’s digital product was so negative that she stopped using it midway through the term.
Now she’s using MindTap from Cengage, and she and her students are more than content. In fact, all but two students got an A or B on the midterm, and Hicks is effusive in
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MindTap makes a world of difference for reading-averse students in an online global issues course.

Course Understanding and Grades Lift with MindTap

“My students don’t read!” Sound familiar? Professor Crystal Garrett faced this common but vexing challenge in her online global issues course at Perimeter College at Georgia State University. Students who didn’t read couldn’t understand and think critically about the subject matter—contemporary global problems with no easy solutions. Fortunately, Garrett found a teaching and learning solution in MindTapinteractive activities.
“MindTap forces students to read, and brings in real world information in a way that compels them to synthesize
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Applied exercises in MindTap prepare future business professionals at California State Polytechnic University to think like managers.

MindTap Powers Complex Learning

Students in Professor Rhonda Rhodes’ capstone strategic management course at Cal Poly Pomona are on a path to careers in business. One of Rhodes’ tasks is to teach them that some problems have more than one answer. But when it came to selecting MindTap, the decision was clear.
“I’ve never had service like this,” she says. “And MindTap is unlike anything I’ve ever used.” Her students apparently agree. “On my exit survey, 89% of my students said they liked
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